Mostly lemon based

Category: General

  • The UK just keeps trying to make life more unpleasant

    Privacy? Civil liberties? Lets see how many we can work on eroding at once.

    Dystopian Future or Current Reality…

     

    Yes, we now have flying police drone CCTV cameras being trialled. Anyone want to ask me why I want to leave?

    *sighs*

  • Productivity gains

    So, today I’ve been a busy little Kate (as can be deduced from the 3 attempts it took me to spell ‘busy’) and am currently in an exhausted little heap at the end of the cofa listening to KK* and drinking ice-tea (well, I’m out of fruit juice; oh, and milk…and cereal…I think I need to go shopping tomorrow).

    Anyhow, this morning I woke up, flicked on the waterheater and bid on ebay. I munched toast, downloaded some shows, and drank my honeybush tea (‘cos I had no milk). Having cleansed myself utilising the warmish water, the hotwater heater was switched off, I dressed, hung out the laundry, drove 40 miles to my mum’s house. We then hopped in Brick (mum and I) and headed to my mum’s allotment; her little shed there had partially lost it’s roof in the storms and so I stripped off the felt, and re-roofed there and then. Not the best quality roofing job in the world, but it should do for a few more years.

    My mum strimmed the allotment a bit; and I did a teeny bit (the battery powered strimmer gave up soon after I took it) and we then headed…to Hungerford. It’s my little (other) Nephew’s birthday in a few days time. I’ve remembered, several times, that I needed to get prezzies. Unfortunately at times like, uh, now. When it’s too late to actually buy them. Anyhow, we managed to find appropriate gifts and card and then piled back into Brick and drove home.

    Having got back to my mom’s I faffed with some plants (involving being up a ladder and extracting dead Clematis (?) from my mum’s Wisteria. Istr cutting and strimming the grass came next. And then packing the bike, and some tools into the car; see this morning in the post came my shiny shiny electronic ignition.

    So I then came home and fitted the ignition. There was a brief hiatus when I realised that I didn’t have a multimeter, amazingly my multimeter has managed to remain in my mum’s garage, I thought I’d brought my electronics toolkit with me, but no. I also didn’t have any connectors with me which has meant that the fitting’s been a little less neat than normal. And the multimeter? I ended up buying an overpriced, overpackaged Gunson’s one. But hey, I blew up my other digital one with a cunning ‘ah, let’s measure volts with it connected to the unfused 10A range’ plan (the rest of the meter still works though…).

    Anyway, fitting complete we went out for a test run and all seems well at the moment.

    I’ll have a nose tomorrow and top up the oil, and the coolant I expect. I think I should make a list of jobs I need to do in my time off, otherwise I’ll forget things. Anyhow, I am now exhausted. Oooh, and there’s Sheridan’s in the larder. What a good idea.

    * A CD Kathryn made me, which is made of awesome (although has the unfortunate side effect of making me miss her more (something I’d previously not considered possible)).

  • Gardening…virtually

    So, I realised that even if the building work is progressing painfully slowly, which it may not be, but *if* it is, then there is one area I can work on, which is the garden; the garden can be done regardless of other…things. So; with that in mind I’ve been planning, thinking, and hurling bricks around with wild abandon. Well, maybe not wild abandon, but some vigour.

    I came up with this:

    The Flickr thing has notes, but essentially the upper left grassy bit stays grassy and mehaps has a twirly rotory dry-ee thing on it. The lower bit is kind of ‘home of the plants’, and suchlike. Maybe with a rockery or something. I dunno, I’ll let my mum decide that :-)

    The path is an as-cheap-as-I-can-make-it gravel affair with (probably) some plastic underneath to stop weed penetration.

    And that brown bit? That’s meant to signify decking. Whilst decking may wander in and out of favour, and everyone and their chicken has decking these days, I’ve got a huge-bloody-lump-of-concrete which exists outside my house, and which cannot be moved. So I’m thinking covering it up with some decking would be a marvellous idea.

  • Long (but productive) day.

    So, having placed an order for a brake disk / brake light lens / brake light switch / pads I set off for pastures new; namely pastures containing a poor S reg Viva that is to be banger raced. While I’m not someone deeply opposed to banger racing; it’s rather sad when a good car is wasted though; and that’s what’s happening with this one. It’s basically a pristine shelled car – it has so little rust it’s unbelievable (especially compared to mine!); but hey.

    At any rate, the guy was flogging the interior, the chrome and lots of other bits and bobs; I have to go back after the race to retrieve the dash, assuming it survives; and the wiper motor; and the cover for that area (‘cos his is rust free, mine’s rusty). The bloke was nice enough – and the seats are… NOT VINYL. Thank the goddess of all things non-vinyl. Ah. Velour, how I love your feathery touch.

    Of course, it’s made me break two rules; one, I spent money on something *non-required* for the viva. This is, of course, not good; except I’m hoping that it’ll marginally up it’s value when I come to resell it. And two, I now have car stuff in the house. See, the late viva seats are slightly different to early viva seats; and thus one needs to, well, work out how to fit them – or transfer the metal base from one to t’other. Either way, it’s not a straightforward unbolt / bolt job, so they’re sat in the house – the idea being to avoid them becoming homes to mices. Anyhow, so they’re here. I stuck the rear seats straight in and discovered that my Viva’s had a nasty brush with fire – there was (I knew) a hole in the back seat, I didn’t realise that it’d been on fire – although it looked a bit that way – the plastic was all warped under it too, but fortunately, I had some replacement bits…

    Uh, yeah. I now own 1.3 vivas, I reckon. Or thereabouts.

    My shed is also quite full now. Amazingly, for the M25 on a Monday my journey was completely trouble free. Well, as near as it ever gets.

    Incidentally, for the technically geeky minded people, here’s my brakelight switch disassembled like it was never meant to be. It’s a bit sad, all that effort and I failed the MOT anyhow, and have ordered a replacement. Still, I’ll probably disassemble it and keep it in pieces as a spare – that way the contact should work if I need to reassemble it:

    I had more to say, interesting stuff, but my thoughts have wandered off; I spent the evening talking to Kathryn who’s managed to MSNifiy the computer where she’s working – which was possibly the most wonderful surprise I could’ve had.

    Oh yes, I remember; the builder is threatening to come back on Monday or Tuesday. Well, Friday to collect keys, Monday or Tuesday to commence defloorification, followed by strengthening and refloorification. This is, how shall we say, goodness.

  • She needs help…

    bluwyngz is looking for advice on raising some money for a sick kid in Romania; anyone with any advice, please go look at this post (you’ll have to click ‘read more’ below, sorry, this theme doesn’t support links in the little doojy excerpts) and help her (them) out.

  • It’s a failure…

    Balls.

    So I got on the ‘zed this morning and my first thought as I headed of was ‘FUCK ME! FAAASSSTT!”. Having settled down to remembering that my bike accelerates quicker than I’m used to in my Viva and my Mog, I pootled to the MOT test centre. Being passed by, on the way, another female member of the motorcycling community. Something which left me slightly surprised.

    Anyhow, we got there, and… the test started badly. Whilst the brakelight (amazingly) remains working, the tester’s assistant bloke described it as ‘yellow’. I did try describing it as ‘red-ish’, but I thought I was going to end up with a dumb-ass failure. Fortunately the tester said “nah, it’s just a bit discoloured is all” which pleased me no-end.

    And the rest of the test seemed to go well. Until he spun the front wheel. Do you remember those clicker’s you used to get on push-bikes? “Clack-Clack-Clack-Clack-Clack-Clack-Clack-Clack”…. Eep, I thought, leaping round to have a look. It turned out to be the brake pads, getting clipped by the disk each revolution. Eventually having stared at it and felt it a bit he declared my front disk to be too thin. As he wandered off he said, well you just need to get that disk sorted, although your swing arm’s got a little bit of play in it, but it’s not too bad.

    I wasn’t sure which side of the MOT fence he was going to sit, and it wasn’t until he came back with the failure certificate that I knew for certain that Cherry would need her new disk sooner rather than, uh, well, fairly soon (which it would’ve been). Annoyingly, this means new pads, new disk and (of course) time. Oh, and the tool to remove the disk from the wheel. Never done that before…

    I did consider swapping the wheel from Charlie to Cherry, but then I realised I’d need new pads anyway, and I wanted to order a brake light switch.  But I need them to come, and me to get the bike back to the test centre within 10 days. Bah.

    In other news, someone saved me the trouble of bidding on their stuff on e-bay:

    If you’re gonna do a Phishing scam, it’s best not to put that in the info when you’re replying… It’s also handy if the mailserver you ‘re abusing doesn’t tag your e-mails as ‘possibly spoofed e-mail address’. So I’ve sent a copy of the e-mail, headers and all to e-bay, and I shan’t be bidding on the nice ‘new combi boiler’. No. I think not.

    Mind you, it’s not like I’ve won anything on e-bay; again I’m back to being bored with the people who use that software that bids 27 seconds before the end of an auction, it’s getting a bit tedious. I’ve not won a combi boiler, a gas hob, a sink, and an oven so far. I’m now at the stage where I assume I’m going to lose. It’s a bit tedious really.

    Anyhow, I said I’d be off to look at bits for my Viva. An entire interior, apparently. So I best get my route planning done and head off. I was trying to achieve launderising today, but my plan has been foiled by the weather going grey and rainy, this is I suspect because I *need* to do it today (last pair of pants, no uniforms left). And because I didn’t do it yesterday, when I should have.

  • Help!

    So, assuming my ‘holiday’ still stands, then in 2 weeks time, I’ve got a week off. My plan, such as it was, was to spend 2 weeks doing car and house things. Now I’m not sure that the holiday will still stand as I’ve had some time off before, and I’m not sure if I’ve now got ‘excessive’ time off since I’m leaving in one month. But, if it does *and* I can get my builder in here to do the joists upstairs, would anyone be able to help on any of the days, with potentially:

    – Collecting a bath and getting it up the stairs?
    – Collecting a shed and putting it up in the garden?

    My real hope is that the bathroom will be ready, and that I can get a shed and a bath, hire a van and collect ’em both on one day…

    I’ve been nosing at e-bay and both are the sorts of big jobs for which I’ll need help; and so I’d be really, incredibly greatful if any of my friends are able to assist. I’d buy you dinner, ‘n all :-)

    Of course, this may all disappear out the window as I may not have the time off…

  • Stoopid house

    So, I’ve been starting to try to obtain bits for my bathroom, and attempting to win (off e-bay) a variety of kitchen/house bits (including a boiler; in hopes of having hot water / heating in time for the summer ;-) ). At any rate, I’ve also been starting to plan my shower, and I’ve discovered what I have to call ‘a problem’.

    It turns out the gap where I’m intending to put my shower is not, as I’d hoped, 1200+mm, which is a standard shower size. No, it’s 1180mm, which is not. 1100 is an uncommon – but available size. Depressingly though, you can’t get cast stone-esq shower bases in 1100 mm. And the cheapy resin base ones? They’re actually more expensive than the faux cast stone ones in 1200mm.

    And shower doors? almost twice as expensive. There’s no way I could shimmy an extra 20mm out of it – it being wall, ‘n’ all. So I quietly curse the fact that my house (checking, it appears to be a nonsensical 46.5″, so it’s a size that makes no sense in any form of measurement).

    Gaaah.

  • At a loss

    For the last 4 months, I’ve spent ‘most every evening talking to one particular person; and currently – and for the next 7 weeks – that person isn’t going to be online. Those who’ve endured my conversation over the past 4 months would probably be greatful for this break in my conversations, for a while I might not start every sentence “Kathryn…”*, but I find myself at a bit of a loss.

    It’s odd, because I’m surrounded by books, and I’ve got stuff I want to read before I start my new job. I’ve actually had a really full day; and I ate the left over curry from last night (despite the delivery bloke’s over amorous nature**), cut the grass (front and back), prep’d my bike for it’s MOT, taken Kathryn to the airport (although I’d much rather have spent the day with her… or gone with her…).

    But I just feel a bit listless and well, sad. So, uh, sympathy? ;-)

    Anyway, I’ll stop whining now and we can resume normal programming. Well, when I say ‘stop whining’, I’ll switch to whining about the car, the bike, the house, builders, computers and the general state of the world… :-)

    * There is the possibility that every sentence will start ‘I miss her’, which is probably not an improvement for them…

    ** Although I think I might be developing an allergy to Slough’s curry houses***. While I can’t tell if someone’s hitting on me, when the bloke delivering the curry gives you his phone number and *then* fracking rings you back to say “I’m just near tescos, I could get some drink and pop round” (no, I’m *really* not joking) then you start to worry about ordering food. I may have to start getting take-aways. All the time.

    *** I am attempting to believe that the place Kathryn and I went for my birthday, they were just being friendly.

  • Help, the gardens are overun with weeds…

    So, in an attempt to reduce the chaos, prevent potential moping, and generally keep myself occupied I prep’d the bike for it’s MOT. Which went slightly less well than I’d hoped. The front brake light switch has, as usual, stopped working. I should’ve thought of this and ordered one in advance. I’m going to hope he’ll let me promise to replace it. I’ve sprayed it with lots of contact cleaner come lubricant and wiggled it lots, I’m hoping that it might work on the day.

    Also, having checked, mirrors are not part of the MOT test requirements. They are part of construction and use, but really mine were useless anyhow. So I’ve taken ’em both off, because one of them needs helicoiling in place, and I don’t have a helicoiling device. I do want them back on, simply because it’s nice to know what’s behind you, but I’m not desparately concerned. I am a bit peeved by the brake light switch though. I only did that for last year’s MOT. It’s only a couple of quid, but still. Aaanyhow, having pulled the iris(es?) out of the bike I then proceeded to do various dances with cars and bikes; which entailed me nearly running the minor into the Viva – having forgotten that the minor’s handbrake is fairly marginal. That would have made a great insurance claim…. Still, I managed to shuffle ’em round so that the bike should be able to be extracted and ridden on Monday.

    All of this leads up to the gardens. See, I’ve really been a bit unsure as to what to do with the garden(s). My mum, I’d decided, would be set loose on the back one, but she wants some rough idea of what I want. I have very rough ideas, but I’m not sure that they’ll work, as such. Anyhow, so I’ve strimmed the weedygrassland in the front garden down to a more manageable length…

    Now, this has to serve several purposes, ideally. Looking pretty is but one component of the plans for the front garden. I’m thinking that I might need some sort of curvy mud retaining wall, and a raised section; and then slop concrete in the other section. This would allow me to have a mini-bike-driveway on the right, at the front, and retain some garden, and maybe make it tidier…

    My intial thoughts are something like this:

    They grey’s the current drive way, the green with the orangey border is my rough outline of the walled / raised bed. I’m not thinking hugely raised, like 2, maybe three layers of brick? Something like that. The curves didn’t quite come out the way I wanted and the scale’s a bit off I think. Still, that’s my general idea :-)

    The back garden’s more of a problem:

    See, I have kind of resigned myself to the fact that the shed is going to have to face the way it is; and to the fact that I’ll probably have to build my own shed up from parts (incidentally, if anyone knows anywhere round Slough where I can pick up scrap wood, I’ve tried Freecycle and unlike Bristol freecycle it’s a bit like calling to a void, all I ever get back is my own echo) and am kind of envisaging stripping down the shed I’ve got, loosing it’s wood-wormey wood, but salvaging the sheet steel and using that to make up the back and the side that you can’t see; then using wood to make up the side you can see and the front. And then planking (maybe ex-pallet?) for the roof? (And then roof felt!).

    The idea was, you see, to make myself some kind of workshop space in which I could strip down the spare engine, but I’m starting to wonder if I’m really going to ever have time to make that an achieveable objective.  Anyhow, so the general idea was to move the shed back, so that it occupies that dubious little gap at the back, almost flush with the garages behind, and also uses up that corner of the garden which is currently given over to a 1970s front door, a tree and a pile of rubbish. *But*, that photo fails to show what it was meant to which is that the concrete is about 15cm* higher behind the shed than in front which I suspect, being lazy, means I’d have to raise the floor of the shed, and maybe put a dinky little step outside it. I don’t think I can easily remove that concrete, what with it being up against a big garage wall… which doesn’t belong to me (annoyingly).

    Aaaanyhow, so I also need to get rid of that concrete centre path. Now, see, various of my friends offered to help with my house before I moved in – so I may be taking them up on this offer, in a summer-dig-kate’s-garden and remove-the-fracking-ugly-path extravaganza – possibly to include a ‘lay the new path and lay out the flowerbeds, oh, and maybe a bit of decking’d be nice party… Heh.

    At least, that would be *nice*; but I’d settle for some help removing the path :-)

    I may also be bringing friends in for a cupboard mounting party, depending on how the kitchen goes. Still no quote from my builder, although they’ve now finished off the plastering (better’n gimp boy in the lounge, not as good as the really good plasterer though). So maybe soon work can commence on the bathroom. Which’d be nice. Then work can commence on removing the old bathroom and finishing off the kitchen. Which’d be nice. :-)

    • Since the EU have sadly decided to allow Britain to keep being insanely dumb about measurements, I’m instigating a new policy of endeavouring (much more strongly) to use metric measures.